Configurating Robot arm (Panda - Franka Emika) In slicer

Support
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Hi Cesar,

I’ve follow your steps but still have not managed to get it working, but I do think I’m on the right track. I’m just going to list the steps that I took on my behalf to give you a better understanding of the situation. This has all been done in my own workspace.

  1. I obtained my robot package from GitHub - ros-industrial/abb_experimental: Experimental packages for ABB manipulators within ROS-Industrial (http://wiki.ros.org/abb_experimental) for the ABB IRB 120 robot. This package contains the support (contains the robot link urdf setup) and moveit packages (the moveit package was created already, but I made sure to edit the package to include ROS Controllers).

  2. I have copied over the ros_igtl_bridge package from ISMR19 Workshop | ROS for Medical Robotics and running the following command
    “catkin_make --cmake-args -DOpenIGTLink_DIR:PATH=~/igtl/OpenIGTLink-build” to build the packages for ros_igtl_bridge

  3. I created a package transform_exporter in my workspace (following the same build dependencies as that of the ismr19_control package from the ROSMED tutorial) and created a ‘scripts’ folder in which i copied over the igtl_exporter.py script into.

  4. In 3D slicer, I have obtained my robot link stl’s (converting them from units metres to mm for 3D slicer) and have applied LinearTransformations to each individual link (translating them using the translation sliders to set it up) image seen below

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  5. I have modified the igtl_exporter.py script to suit the links of my robot. The ABB IRB 120 robot has link_1, link_2, link_3, link_4, link_5, link_6 and tool0/flange. see image below

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    image1352×1835 288 KB

  6. To test my progress I ran the ros_igtl_bridge node (bridge.launch) and the igtl_exporter node. I then opened up 3D slicer and made sure that the connection status is ON for the OpenIGTLinkIF (port 18944) and then I proceeded to load up my ABB IRB 120 robot in Moveit and perform a plan and execute it.(see image below).

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    image1827×1368 364 KB

I believe I’ve followed your steps, but maybe not to the exact detail (possibly elaborate on the exact steps you took) which is probably why my robot doesn’t work as intended.

Could it possibly be how I set up my linear transformations nodes in 3D slicer (I set mine up using the transformations module and manually translated each link into position to set up the robot)? or how I’ve copied over the ros_igtl_bridge package or igtl_exporter.py script (maybe I didn’t set up my transform_exporter package correctly) or is there something else on the ROS side of things that I need to edit/modify? Even though I got the moveit! packages from the github depository, maybe the planning group or ros controller isn’t set up properly?

I’m greatly appreciative for the guidance you have provided me thus far, and will be happy to hear from your response. I’d love to hear in detail how you set your own robot up to get it working with the ROSMED project, maybe I can mimic the exact steps you took to get mine up and running.

Thank you !!